I wonder how many people, if asked to give the names of the nine Muses, would remember them, or the Seven Wonders of the World, or even the Seven Labours of Hercules - but I am sure that every homoeopath would be able immediately to give the twelve Tissue Remedies, so I will not repeat their names here.
The very caption 'Tissue Remedies' is a moot point, because it is not an exact statement. Of course, a tissue remedy means a remedy which appears 'as is' in the tissues of the body. Other remedies than these twelve appear in the tissues of the body. and. moreover, the term 'double salts', which some people apply to them, is not correct either. One of the tissue remedies is Silica, which is silicon dioxide, not a double salt but an oxide, and therefore the term "tissue salt' is incorrect. I do not know what would be the purist's term for these substances.
Of these twelve, Calcarea Sulphurica is the most questionable. It appears in only one of the tissues of the body, namely the bile, and it does not always appear there, according to Bungc. the physiologist. In the second revision of his book. Dr Schuessler leaves out Calc. Sulph. entirely and divides its symptoms between Silica and Natrum Phos. Notwithstanding, for general purposes, it is included as one of the twelve tissue remedies. (It would be interesting if our materia medica could have provings of all the substances which compose the body, as remedies. We do have some of the complicated ones. For instance. Lecithin and Cholesterin have been partially proved.)
Calc. Sulph. was mentioned long before Schuessler. Hahnemann stressed the importance of a number of the inorganic cell salts, as he called them, proving Calc. Carb.. Natrum Mur. and Kali Mur. Stapf in his Archives in 1832 spoke of the great importance of the essential components of the human body as homoeopathic remedies, and Hering and von Grauvogl both spoke of these remedies. In 1873 Schuessler brought out his Physiological Function Remedies, as he called them, which is perhaps the best title of all for them.
Calc. Sulph. itself is rather imperfectly proved. It was proved by Hering and by Wittcin in 1847. best by Conant in 1873 (Transactions of the A.l.H. for that year), subsequently by an unknown lady, and then bv
an eclectic physician, very recently. Its presence in the body in bile, if one took stock in the Doctrine of Correspondences, might seem to indicate it as a liver remedy. What there is of the provings shows no particular connection there; but it is an interesting point to hold in mind and to check up when it seems to apply to a case.
The relations of this particular double remedy are very interesting. In Hering it appears as compatible after Kali Mur.. Natrum Sulph. and Silica, and compares with Calendula and Hepar Sulph. In one other place I found that it was compatible after Belladonna. These are the only relations given for it officially, although Schuessler himself states that it will antidote Mercury and some of its effects and also, in high potency, that it will relieve the effects of gross poisoning by quinine.
Calc. Sulph., according to some, stands mid-way between Hepar Sulph. and Silica; according to others it is even deeper and should be given after Silica. This of course is chiefly in the realm of boils and pus conditions.
Unfortunately not all our homoeopathic vegetable remedies have been analyzed chemically in order to see what their inorganic constituents are, but some few have been. Of those that have, there are four in which calcium sulphate has been found - Ailanthus. Apocynum. Asafoetida and Phytolacca. That seems a strange four, but you remember how excellent Phytolacca is in boils. That may be due to the amount of calcium sulphate in it: Asafoetida contains 6.2%. That is interesting because Calc. Sulph. also has caries of the bones as well as a more marked mental symptomatology than 1 had thought before I began to study it, which again may go with the Asafoetida.
Calcium sulphate is the same as gypsum, plaster of Paris, another form is alabaster. Hepar Sulph. is the sulphide of lime: Calc. Sulph. is the sulphate.
According to Schuessler, the role of Calc. Sulph. in the liver is to destroy the old red blood cells by abstracting water from them, and when Calc. Sulph. is deficient these clogging dead blood cells stay in the organism: when it is doing its work they are thrown out in catarrhal discharges.
Just as a matter of amusement I took the Kent Repertory and went through for all the symptoms of Calc. Sulph. which stood in the third or highest degree, under Mind and Generals. I found that in those two sections in the third degree there were twenty symptoms, and in the second degree there were forty symptoms in our entire Mind and Generals. That shows you how slightly proved the remedy is, and how little is known of those two most important departments of it.
It is very interesting in any remedy which has two distinct elements - as this one has. the calcium and the sulphur - to see which is dominant and which recessive, and what symptoms can be hitched up with each side of the combination. In this instance I think the honours go to the sulphur. Of the great mentals and generals, more than two-thirds are like sulphur and only one-third like calcium. Some of the chief mentals are irritability, anxiousness. capriciousness, aversion to company, contra- dictoriness and obstinacy, fear of death and evil and insanity, and other fears, as well as timidity, a craving for stimulants, and mental irresolution, which is a marked feature, a taciturnity, and also a maliciousness. The number of remedies that have a real maliciousness mentally are relatively few. and very interesting to think of. Every now and then we get a patient who we know must have that symptom.
The Generals of Calc. Sulph. are quite interesting. It is both a warm and a cold remedy. In other words, it stands three for heat and two for chilliness in the Repertory, and it may swing either way.
One interesting modality in that connection is that it is much better uncovered. This is one of the differentiating points between Calc. Sulph. and Hepar Sulph.. because Hepar Sulph. is worse for uncovering. Calc. Sulph.. however, has complaints after becoming cold: it also has complaints from washing and complaints from working in water, which you would expect from the Calcarea. It is worse from exertion and particularly averse to motion. It is a lazy, indolent, good-for-nothing remedy in one mental phase. It is also worse from over-heating, and from standing, as you might prognosticate from the Sulphur, worse from the warmth of the bed, and worse from wraps and from a warm room. It has a curious and perfectly definite modality of better from eating, not only at noon, but at all times. It also takes after Sulphur in that it is a great remedy for suppressed perspiration and the evil effects of it. It has a marked craving for acid fruits and pungent vegetables. The symptoms are rather more right-sided than left-sided, although it is not one of the strongly right-sided remedies. One of the main spheres of its action is the respiratory, where it is relatively little known. It has coryza. often inveterate, of the right nostril, slightly acrid and fluid, sometimes alternating, the right nostril being worse in the morning, and the left in the evening, and vice versa, one stopped and one flowing. Also in regard to the respiratory tract, it has one great use which is hard to find in the books but which I have seen demonstrated clinically - it helps close up fistulous openings in the chest after empyema. Calc. Sulph.. if the symptoms agree, will do wonders in healing up such a sinus with granulations from the bottom.
There is an interesting thing in regard to Calc. Sulph. in hare lip and cleft palate. Duncan, in his little book Acid and Alkaline Children. speaks of a number of cases in which women have borne hare lip and cleft palate children: one case had had four and another eight, in all of whom it had been present. Duncan got to thinking about it. wondering what he could do. He had had these women on what he thought were their constitutional remedies, and still the babies kept coming with hare lips and cleft palates. Finally he went back to embryology and found that that abnormality occurs prior to the third month in gestation: he found it was a bone deficiency, and decided that it must be a lack of some of the calciums. The question was. which one.
In the particular case he then had in hand the mother was very clearly a Sulphur patient. He thought he would try Calc. Sulph. empirically for the mother at her next pregnancy, to see what he could do in the way of obviating hare lip. He gave her Calc. Sulph. over seven months of pregnancy. She bore her fifth baby, the first who had not had the condition. He repeated it in three other cases while the baby was in utero, and each child was born with no hare lip. There are many possibilities of a slip betwixt that cup and lip, but it is an interesting field, and the whole subject of possible prescribing for the development of a child in utero is opened up bv it.
Another great sphere is in women's diseases, in bringing back suppressed leucorrhea. in getting rid of menstrual difficulties and in fibroid tumours of the uterus. But the greatest sphere of Calc. Sulph.. probably, is upon the skin. Where wounds do not heal, where bruises are neglected, where boils keep coming in crops, where there are abscesses, often painless, in the anal region; where there are fistulae of any kind, Calc. Sulph. is one of the remedies to be particularly considered. Let us consider Calc. Sulph.'s relation to some of the nosodes. It is given in some of the books, notably in Kent's, as one of the great remedies for those cases where the seemingly indicated remedy does not act. for those cases which need to be followed up with a deeper influence, and is classed with Tuberculinum and Psorinum. The particular nosode to which 1 want to point out certain resemblances is Pyrogen. At first sight I did not know myself how I could do it. because they are so different in so many ways. But as you go through, comparing the two. you do see certain striking similarities in usefulness.
Calc. Sulph.. for instance, is one of the rare remedies which has hilarity in its mental makeup - it is quite refreshing to see one that is not despondent - particularly toward twilight, at 6 p.m.: Pyrogen too, in its
A Tissue Remedy
first stages, together with loquacity, has great gaiety.
Moreover, of course. Pyrogen has the tendency to septic abscesses, and is a magnificent remedy for crops of hoils which can be traced back to prodromes of blood poisoning in the past: also in peritonitis, if one has the temerity to prescribe before sending for the surgeon. Pyrogen will often be called for: as will Calc. Sulph., where there has been a vent for the pus and where it keeps forming and coming in large quantities long beyond the time when healing should be present.
There are also certain respiratory analogies between Pyrogen and Calc. Sulph. For instance, they both have lung abscess and some of the many symptoms agree fairly well. Pyrogen has a strange keynote "as if the heart pumped cold water', whereas Calc. Sulph. has 'as if the bronchial tubes were pumped full of hot water". They also have in common a slight symptom of the head - the sensation of a cap on the head.
A word about Pyrogen. It ought to be called the Briareus of remedies (he was the gentleman who had a hundred hands); your Pyrogen patient will lie terribly sick and feel as though he had hands all over the bed. It has been called the Aconite of typhoid: it is Baptisia with a very high fever: it follows Rhus Tox. often and carries through its work in other cases where there is great rattling of the chest; it may follow Antimonium Tartaricum.
Think of these two remedies when you find cases in the spheres of the respiratory or gynaecological or dermatological diseases which have any of these symptoms.